Daily Sitka Sentinel

School Board Sees How Arts Center Works

By TOM HESSE
Sentinel Staff Writer
    It’s concert season for Sitka schools, which means just about every grade level in the district will hit the Performing Arts Center stage.
    Add to the concerts a Community Theater performance and a dance recital, and the PAC will have hosted nearly every demographic in town in this month alone.
    Sitka School Board members toured the busy building as part of a work session Monday night, and were briefed by staff members on the many aspects of its operation.
    The center is owned by the city and managed by the school district in a cooperative arrangement with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.
    “Pretty much every arts organization in town has used this building at some point in the last year,” said Monica Ague, the Americorps volunteer serving as theater manager for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.
    The board budgets $200,000 a year to operate the facility, which cost $17 million to build seven years ago.
    Citing the past two years’ worth of data, Ague said the PAC has hosted 132 performances – 48 of which were school events – by 15 different user groups. Ague said 43 events are already scheduled for 2015.
    In design and equipment the theater meets the standards of big city performance venues, with professional-level rigging systems, an elevator in the orchestra pit, projection screens, backstage storage and a costume room that Technical Director J Bradley said gets rave revues from the highest level of professionals.
    “The only comment that I’ve been able to get out of three Broadway costumers is that we need to change the light bulbs on the mirrors in the dressing room, so they definitely like working here,” he said.
    Of course maintaining an arts center of this quality means there’s a lot of specialized and expensive equipment, Bradley said, comparing the facility to a three-masted ship.
    “You make one mistake and you’ve done $10,000 or a quarter-million dollars worth of damage,” he said.
    Because of that, Bradley, who does technical work for shows and theaters all over the world, is creative about keeping costs down. Rather than waiting for a $30,000 part to fail, Bradley keeps an eye out for used parts that can be purchased for a fraction of that cost in order to have them on hand and available the moment they are needed.
    “What we’ve done is shopped on eBay and bought sort of vintage stuff and store it until something blows up,” Bradley said, adding that they’ve bought critical parts from as far away as Australia.
    Bradley said one reason the PAC can’t be a full-service training center for behind-the-scenes technical jobs is because the resources aren’t there to pay for mistakes. But for a small number of students, the PAC has become a training center for theater management, Superintendent Mary Wegner said.
    “It’s a select group of students for who that’s a good fit, but when it happens it’s magical,” Wegner said.
    “We do meet with the teachers every so often and say this is what we’re looking for, and they’ll let us know if they have a student who fits those qualities,” Bradley said.
    As a community resource, the PAC isn’t run with the goal to make money, Wegner said.
    “Given that this is a city-owned, district-administered facility we try to keep the rates reasonable,” Wegner said.
    School Board President Lon Garrison said part of the point of the facility is to offer high quality resources at an affordable cost.
    “When we talk about this being able to generate revenue to offset cost, it’s a difficult concept,” he said.
    In addition to keeping a close eye on available parts, Bradley said the PAC staff finds a number of ways to increase the resources without cutting into the district’s budget. For example, the approach to prop and set design is a “cumulative” effort. Bradley said when a performance needs a stage set, it is built in modular fashion so it can be taken apart, transported and stored for use in later productions. Each show adds more materials, slowly increasing the capacity for a stage production.
    “Everything that’s built here is built with that eye to how can we reuse it,” Bradley said. “What’s up in the mezzanine that powers those performances is a cooperative effort.”
    The facility also receives a lot of community support – such as free cabinet work by parents.
    “You get these groups of outstanding kids and, surprise, surprise, they bring their outstanding parents along and do a lot of outstanding things for the building,” Bradley said.
    School Board member Tom Conley said he remembered the concern about the costs when the PAC was being built, but after seven years of use he couldn’t be more pleased with the facility.
    “There’s a lot of people in town who were worried about the cost overrun and I think we got a bargain,” he said.